Live from Google I/O 2012

We’re at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, waiting for the keynote to Google’s IO 2012 conference to begin. Refresh for updates as they happen.

9:34: We’ve just been informed the keynote is about to start.

9:36: Countdown timer to the keynote just went up on the main displays. We are also being treated to some quality Daft Punk music.

9:37: Countdown just ended. Vic Gundotra, SVP of Engineering just took the stage. He just welcomed everyone, including the 1 million people watching via livestream on YouTube.

9:38: Gundotra says that when this conference series first started, things like Chrome were still in their infancy and he’s thanking developers for their efforts.

9:39: Hugo Barra, Director of Product Management just took the stage.

9:50: We’re back after some technical difficulties with Wi-Fi. Barra has announced Android 4.1 Jellybean. He’s going through new features, like better drag and drop, a better camera, 12 new supported languages and gesture navigation for blind users.

9:53: The Android photo taking and browsing interface has been improved, users can now swipe to delete photos and browse a photostream. Android Beam now allows users to send photos and videos between phones. NFC phones can now pair within a second.

9:55: Users can now make calls and hang up from their Notifications. Notifications in general share much more information. Users can even send canned responses from within notifications. You can +1 items in Google+ from a notification. There is also third party support for Foursquare and apps like TuneIn Radio and Pulse news. Users can also expand and collapse them via swipe gestures.

9:59: New UI involves the power of the knowledge graph in a new way. You can ask it questions that will bring up different cards with the facts you want.

10:00: We’re getting an example of Jelly Bean voice search. Randall just asked who the prime minister of Japan is, as well as the definition of “robot”. It showed the answers. Quickly

10:01: Randall just asked for pictures of Pygmy Marmosets. It brought up a bunch of images.

10:03: “Google now” will “get you just the right information at just the right time.” It uses a person’s search history, as well as their calendar to find relevant information. It’ll use your traffic history to figure out your commute times and offer you better/faster routes depending on traffic. It’ll also include information about public transit, like BART schedules in the Bay Area. As you walk down the street, it’ll show you info/reviews of the nearest restaurants. With your calendar, it’ll alert you when to leave, taking into account how long it’ll take you to walk to the bus stop, as well as the commute time. It’ll update you to flight delays if you’ve already checked in for a flight. When you’re traveling, it’ll offer you exchange rates and translations based on where you are.

10:05: We just got a demo of Google now in action, showing off all these features. We’re told the cards in Google now gets smarter as you spend more time with it.

10:08: Jelly Bean is going to roll out in July, but the SDK is available now at developer.android.com. Google is also announcing the Platform Development Kit for hardware developers. This will be available for hard A beta version of the Jelly Bean PDK has already been available for Android partners for the past few weeks.

10:09: Now onto Google Play. He said there are more than 600,000 apps and games across Google Play and just reached 20 billion app installs.

10:11: Android apps in 190 countries, more than 50% include in-app billing. Google’s expanded carrier building to 5 new countries.